


Being Alive

by jenofvengerberg



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Fluff and Angst, Fluffy Ending, Hospitals, M/M, Old Married Couple, Reaper 76, Reaper76 - Freeform, Reyes rejoins the team, based on fanart, blind!jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 14:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenofvengerberg/pseuds/jenofvengerberg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Reyes turns himself in in an attempt to re-join with his squad. Probably gonna be fluffy and gay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

 

Ever since the Omnic Crisis hit its peak, field hospitals became a place where reality was slightly altered. Within the sterile walls and fluorescent ceilings, the borders and political red tape that defined the rest of the world came to an end. The colours of skin that Dr. Ziegler injected anesthetic into or opened for surgery varied widely, as did the people’s tongues in which they cursed and complained of their injuries. Alongside each other in rows of beds, nations met in the forms of their once champions, now considered little more than maniacs.

The latest incident in the field came from a botched attempt to (once again) reclaim the Volskaya factory. Every other detail of the assault was muddled, made worse by the squad frantically trying to translate their accounts between 6 different languages while delirious from blood loss. The ensuing explosion had, in any case, ushered them into Angela’s care with haste. She had sighed, chose to concern herself with medical reports instead of sitreps, and got to work.

Doctors had oaths, and rules, ones that had scarce changed regardless of whom or what powers controlled the world. Chief amongst those rules was that everyone got treated. Everyone. Even if they were presumed-dead rogue agents with ungodly powers.    
  
The aforementioned super-powered ex-agent had, incidentally, been the only one conscious when the site was evacuated. Making matters more curious, he came along, quite literally, quietly.   
  
Fearing reprisal when the others awoke, she’d placed privacy curtains around his bed in an innocuous-looking corner. It was what Commander Morrison had taught her to be a “blind spot”.   
  
However, the trouble with trying to  _ not _ draw attention to something was that it often had the opposite effect.   
  
“You need to be resting, Captain.” Angela insisted in a stage whisper, trying to be discreet but not so discreet that someone might actually notice her hiding something.   
  
In spite of the crutch she leaned on and her visible age, Ana Amari looked no weaker, nor less dangerous than she had during Overwatch’s Golden Age.    
  
“I’m not asking for your permission, Doctor.” Ana replied, kindly but firmly.   
  
Needing to check on the half-dozen other injured heroes, Angela crumpled slightly in defeat.   
  
Sliding through the curtain to meet her old colleague, Ana found it almost a comical sight: the fearsome Reaper, legendary outlaw and terrorist, in repose on a nondescript hospital bed, still in his full garb.    
  
“Gabriel,” she began sagely, “If the rumours of what you can do are true, you hardly need to be here,”

The man in black exhaled in what could have been a chuckle, 

“Why leave when my own personal Dr. Frankenstein arrived to fetch me? She’s been dying to see her pet project in action, hasn’t she?” He was wheezing, speech a labor when he wasn’t in battle assuming the voice of Death. Whatever Ziegler had done to resurrect him seemed less successful on his vocal chords. 

Ana made a mental note to have a word with Angela about informed consent and the importance of obtaining it from the subjects of her ‘miracle surgeries’. But first, the matter in front of her. 

“What are you doing here. Really.” A simple statement, her usual sweet and matronly airs gone as she said it.

Reyes shifted his weight on the plastic mattress, thinking. For a moment, the Captain Amari of yesteryear wanted to return, to stride the length of the room and lay into him with one of his own old Blackwatch-style interrogations. To strip whatever flesh he had left for his stupid rebellion, his stupid fight with Jack that had destroyed their team, their  _ family _ . Instead, she waited, pacing forward with more weight than she needed on the crutch, a gesture to show she wouldn’t do what she wanted to. She was always less inclined to impulse than her male comrades.

“Had a tip. Thought that… he... might be there.” grumbled Reyes, then changed the subject immediately, 

“The good doctor will be wanting to see me soon, hermana.”

Moving slowly, deliberately trying to appear calmer than he actually was, he hoisted himself upright, starting to remove his layers of gear in preparation for the endless tests that Angela and her team would want to run. He turned fluidly towards the wall, excluding his old friend from the sight of him.   
  
“Gabe, I have known you long enough to know when you’re full of shit, experimental augmentations or no.” She never even had to raise her voice, at least not with him,.

His hand, at his face beneath the huge black hood, paused. She pressed on,

“So, what do you want?”

Tentatively and jerkily, he brought his fist down, clutching his mask; the single, carved piece of carbon fibre that had separated himself from his past. Were it any other team member, he wouldn’t have turned back around. It was Ana, only her, that he knew to be made of steel.

He looked older. In spite of the scar tissue that shifted and crawled across his face like a living thing, and, was that smoke coming from his skin? But in spite of it, he still looked like himself, maybe even more than he ever had. His hair and beard were white and patchy, nothing could grow where he was burned and mangled. But he was, wholly and unquestionably, Gabriel. 

“Ana,” he choked out, “I’m tired.”

His expression was cautious, waiting for her to scream or flee. When neither happened, he stood, carefully peeling away his cloak and discarding it on the bed like a dead thing. Where he wasn’t covered by his undershirt, the skin on his arms and torso was much like his face. But if it surprised the Captain, she didn’t look as such. 

Knowing the others would never be so kind and that he had a million questions ahead of him, he began to walk, still slowly and with none of his grace as Reaper. Towards Ana, then past her, then to the heavy drapes that had provided asylum. 

He was about to pull back the cloth when Ana asked the questioned that charged through him. No matter how hard she tried to be gentle, it still came out like a bullet:

“You loved him, didn’t you.”

He was too tired to be Reaper. He had run out of terrifying things to say. He only had left the truth:

“I never stopped.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this based on artwork by a friend. Artist credit is [here RIGHT HERE](http://tinderet.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Also [on my tumblr](http://jenofvengerberg.tumblr.com/post/147925231517/fic-being-alive-overwatch-reaper76-i-have) if you feel like patting my ego


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

Commander Morrison waited in Switzerland at the ruins of the old HQ. It had been built into one of the more modestly-sized mountains, high enough to afford a pleasant view but not so much that oxygen became a concern.  Nice place, before they’d nuked it. 

The former hero of Overwatch was not a man who liked paying the media too much attention. But, neither was he  _ completely _ the out-of-touch old fart that his current crew liked to think he was. For instance, he was not blind to the utter circus that had engulfed the news for the past week: the accident during the skirmish at Volskaya, followed by the sudden disappearance of the Reaper, followed by sightings of him re-appearing at one of Angela’s facilities?

To Morrison’s mind, all he had to do was wait it out, and he knew the exact place.  

Expecting he’d be waiting a few days’ time at least, he had packed for the occasion, and found a stable piece of building debris to set up camp. 

Within a few hours, a cold wind had passed through. It was too cold for the altitude and the bright sky above him, and it came with a pillar of smoke, and the faint, iron scent of blood. 

Jack’s hands fumbled, trying to grab his visor from his backpack, hoping the boost to his optics would make sense of the visage. The distracted moment left him vulnerable, allowing the smoky form to take on mass and charge at him.

The thing hurled into his gut, staggering him and leaving him fighting to get his air back. It struck again, now the size and shape of a man, slamming and pinning him to the wall. The old soldier no longer needed his visor then. He knew only one person whom would fight him that dirty, with such prejudice…

“...hi.” Reyes snarled, clamping his fists around his old friends’ biceps. 

“Hey.” grunted Jack, not bothering to put up a fight. Even with him dead to rights, the undead man was hesitating, his vice grip a noticeable compensation for the trembling his hands would otherwise have. Then Morrison huffed shortly, it was  _ almost  _ a laugh,

“You get a new haircut? It’s really working for you.”

Gabriel tried, pointlessly, to ignore the tell-tale sensation of his stomach dropping. He hadn’t even realized he could still  _ do _ that with the state of his body. Years of chaos. The rift that had torn the team into pieces like tissue paper. Gabriel appearing before him like a living nightmare and all the Commander could deign to do was crack wise. That stupid, farmer’s-son confidence had never left him. It was another in the plethora in things that Reyes had not prepared for. 

“You look old,” was about as much as he could muster to say. In spite of himself, in spite of his powers, he was tired.

Jack fired back with the second armor-piercing question that Gabriel had to face in a week:

“So, is this your way of asking for reinstatement?”

He was old, almost as scarred up as Gabriel  _ without _ the help of bizarre experiments, and half-blind without his ridiculous visor. But that stupid, boyish certainty was unshaken by the decades of violence. 

Gabriel answered before he had time to realize the words were out loud:

“I never stopped.”

Saying it to Ana before was a hard, slow thing to pass, something he’d admitted more to himself than to her. 

It took the old soldier a moment to understand. But only a moment. 

Gabriel didn’t bother fighting back as his comrade, his  _ Jack _ , broke free of the restraints and slid his own pale hands up and over his shoulders, pulling him forward to an embrace, their first in decades. Gabe folded himself into the broad chest before him, trying to remember how to retain his physical shape. He didn’t care about the stench of whiskey and old leather that invaded his senses, or the grip of a war heroes’ arms squeezing his airways. He was somewhere solid, real, and home.

Rested on Gabe’s downturned head, Jack answered, now not sounding so cocky:  
  
“Neither did I.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on artwork by a friend of mine, more of her stuff [OVER HERE](http://tinderet.tumblr.com/). Art by her, writing by me.
> 
> I was toying with using the blind!Jack fanon but I didn't really go whole-hog with it. I like the idea that the visor helps him see but I wanted to avoid the stereotype of having a deformed character with a blind love interest. Hurray for me trying to be socially conscious while writing gay fluff about video game characters?

**Author's Note:**

> artist credit: [here RIGHT HERE](http://tinderet.tumblr.com/)


End file.
